A Hummingbird's Flight: Part I

She wound her way up the stony path slowly,
with bitterness etched deeply onto her face.
The shawl she carried had slipped slightly,
hanging at an awkward angle on her shoulders,
making her appear hunched and hurt.
Her sandals were thatched rope,
frayed, with soles of exhausted leather.
And from her mouth came small sounds,
heavy sighs and mirthless laughter.

Along a bend,
some small stones made her slip and catch her footing,
sending her crooked hand to grasp the side of the mountain path,
and forcing a gasp to escape her muttering.
"Curse this journey," she said aloud to no one,
"and curse this road," she intoned, although more softly than before.
Releasing the cliffside,
she straightened as much as can be imagined,
and kept her steps tight and close.

Ascending higher,
the woman turned another bend,
and suddenly stopped,
mesmerised by the shape of a particular stone,
clinging to the sandstone slab and pierced with numerous roots.
"I have seen this shape before..." she whispered,
as she carefully bent to examine, and perhaps take the strange stone with her.
Crooning to herself, she gently pried the stone loose,
and watched as what had held before, now tumbled down.
Taking a reluctant step backwards,
the woman tilted her head and viewed the new ruin,
satisfied that the crack in the sandstone had run its course.
Glancing down at the strange shape in her hand,
she quickly pocketed it in her ragged dress,
pulling back layers of cloth like the flap of a hummingbird's wings.

"I must show this to Him," she murmured,
quickly gaining lost speed,
and ascending faster than she should.

The woman hurriedly hitched her shawl higher,
and glanced only once behind her,
as she continued upwards,
caressing what was lost in her dress pocket.

Then, at a third bend,
close to the end,
she suddenly realised her mistake,
and pressed herself tightly against the cliff wall.
Moaning lowly to herself,
she began chanting in unknown words,
wrapping herself in a nimbus of tones.
With only one nervous glance upwards,
she flicked her coat sideways,
and pressed herself into her chant.
- - - 
"I am too late," he growled to himself,
glancing down the mountain path,
twitching his mouth side to side in frustration.
He quieted then,
listening,
and caught it then: the sound of a hummingbird's wings fading.
Smiling strangely, he began to hum,
and slide slowly forwards.

A Colorado Afternoon

Quick hum of the mind,
wheels spinning like cotton candy,
thoughts dancing like lanky elephant grass,
and thunder rolling like rocks down a hill.

Click, snap of the lens,
rose captured and still,
tilted sideways head,
another snap of the lens.

Look up at clouds,
gray ash in bundled towering heaps,
bumping into faithful sunshine,
tumbling into a family of shadow.

Click, snap of the lens,
sage captured and still,
straightened gaze of the head,
another snap of the lens.

Look down at the path,
where a winding road is food for adventure,
and umber burns into cadmium yellow,
then burns into Prussian blue.

Click, snap of the lens,
birch captured and torn,
thoughtful shake of the head,
another snap of the lens.

Look across at waving wheat,
where quiet cows slowly chew,
Oxpeckers finish a meal,
and the sun tumbles downwards to dusk.

Click, snap of the lens,
another snap  of the day.

The Kingdom of Small Deaths (A Fairy Tale Poem)

The magnificent sound stretched like a rocky "V" into the horizon,
cutting and wandering away from the silent port where the tall man stood.
Further into nowhere,
where greens melted into bonds of beryl and sorrel,
a calmness floated eerily across a mirrored surface,
and if he tilted his head just right,
the softness of the morning
could be heard reverberating through pines and sky,
and into the silent sentinel next to him.

"Are you ready?" the blind priest demanded,
turning his head in the man's direction,
and motioning towards a small skiff that bobbed little in the stilled water.
The priest's cassock twitched and twirled as he turned,
and he felt his way towards the water,
gnarled staff finding its own way to the broken pier.

The tall man pinned his eyes downwards to the left,
and responded while gazing at the receding form. "Yes."

Both forms walked towards the light craft,
and as the priest stepped into the boat,
he turned around and held up his hand towards the tall man, baggy sleeve opened, swallowing darkness,
and stated clearly: "Payment is due to enter the Kingdom of Small Deaths."

"Of course," the rangy man replied, and pulled out a stem of purple foxglove.
Handing it to the man, he couldn't help noticing the old priest squint his eyes, as he murmured, "you bring death to these waters. Pray it is enough."

"I cannot pray until I've seen her," the tall man responded,
stepping into the boat behind the priest, and untying the mooring rope.
"Years have passed since anyone visited the statue's clearing,"
the old man intoned.
"And years have passed since anyone returned," the lanky man quipped.
"I know the stories."

"The stories do not lie," said the priest,
as he pushed the skiff into ripple-less waters.
The two men moved out past the shore, passing thistles and lady's slipper,
bottlebrush and amaryllis, pines and black coral tree.
They stood silently, the boat moving on its own deeper into the sound.
"She has been waiting for you in the light for eight dark years, you know,"
the priest stated, behind the tall man,
as the boat passed from open water to winding river.
Gradually, the thoughtful river turned to the right,
and where their faces were once bathed in cold sunlight,
now narrow shadows whispered to their sides,
and the boat crept quickly forward towards the end.

Inside the man's eyes, lions battled with slippery geckos,
and the rhubarb shadows on the banks beside the boat lay waiting.
The dusk waned into evening,
and the priest repeated, "are you ready?"

The tall man stirred back to life,
and stepped out of the skiff.
After all, in stillness lay death in this Kingdom by the sound.

He walked a few paces into the glade by the shore,
and did not look back.
If he had, he would have seen the boat quickly receding,
and disappearing around the vine-strangled corner back towards the sound.
After a few more steps, he turned to the left,
and continued up a steep path surrounded by the throaty hum of cicadas.

He never wavered,
and strode upwards deeper into the dense forest,
remembering her scent,
and strawberry eyes like a drug to his words.
A few minutes passed,
scattering like the intricate pieces of a broken watch,
and he arrived in the glade of the statue's clearing.

Light bathed colours into mosaics of dance,
and the reedy man took a soft intake of breath.
She melted out of a sage tree,
and stood behind him,
watching and waiting as he walked into the clearing.
Following him noiselessly steps behind,
she smiled tenderly as he reached the pool and sank to his knees.
The waters of dark aqua stared back at him,
and reflected nothing but his face,
though her hands and face nearly touched his ears.

"Come away my soul," he whispered, bowing deeply,
hallowed ripples rushing out from where his lips touched the water's surface.

Silence and shadows.

The tall man quietly took off his clothes,
piece by piece,
and sunk into the statue's clearing,
falling deeply into the moody waters.
His feet slipped off the muddy bank,
and dipped below where eyes can see.

Crinkling in smile and mirth,
she laughed,
tilting her head backwards,
and filled the glen with the sound of shattered glass.
"I will let this one pass, I believe," she answered,
stepping into her waters of eternal change.

The statue's clearing hushed, and
eyeless and lidless, the trees listened.
Their queen in the kingdom had never broken the surface.

"Oh yes, this one shall pass," she voiced,
as her hair like cirrus clouds floating lazily on the water,
and her eyes now the colour of champagne,
sank below into the pool to meet the rangy man.

A Boneyard Beneath His Feet (Part III of "The Shifting Cliff" - Poem)

Thousands upon thousands of words, a river of words,
rolled and roiled beneath his craft, pelting him forwards through the rift.
The bones of sentences long hidden, forgotten, and smudged, tumbled over and over
within the merciless waves of wet ink,
and propelled the cracked man forwards into a land where once no water flowed.

Ahead, he could see a house of paper and wind,
where atop a ladder perched a tiny man,
whistling and singing into the ceaseless cadence of the rift's random rumble.

Glancing quickly into the distance to his right,
he could see the small giant man making mountains of fur and wood,
lyrics of his chant tumbling down the cliff-sides in the distance.
Even from fathoms away, the cracked man could hear the despair
of stone breaking and cracking into a jumbled heap of letters.

Through the rapids then,
Bent and withered with a soul the shape of a snowflake,
the cracked man began his own written chant,
and the energy began pouring out of his feet,
like sand from a sieve,
and into the boneyard of words beneath his feet,
beneath his craft,
beneath his silent lips moving in a private prayer.

His small boat began changing direction,
as dark sunshine began breathing over and into the rift,
and words began crawling up over the side of the skiff,
bones and letters weathered and disused,
filling the bottom of the cracked man's craft.

Forwards then to the tiny man raising his paper-thin chant to the horizon,
as the cracked man dipped his pen into the inky river
and began to write.
Before him a page of song began to unfurl,
and behind lay what mattered less.

Chapters rose from blotched waters,
and he lifted them to the lip of the rift,
as the paper man's chant came to an end,
and the tiny man sank back to his overhang in the cliffs.

The cracked man straightened,
and came to rest where the rapids rose,
spilling into the tiny man's house,
tearing down sheets of mottled paper,
and crumpling walls of long forgotten chapters.
He got out of his boat and began to weep.

Out of the Rift (Sequel to The Shifting Cliff)

The tiny man climbed the ladder of words outside his shoddy barn.
It reached over the gable of his rough hewn home,
and into the whistling winds that circled over his dandelion pastures.

There had never been a day where he had not climbed this ladder,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where sunburnt seeds
did not flit around the shingles that hung haphazardly,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where he did not glimpse the small man grow immense,
rise to the shutters of the sky, shake and shudder the horizon,
and watch words burst from cracked cliffs like apples tumbling from an orchard tree,
yet somehow today was different.

The tiny man reached the final rung of his ladder,
and gazed down tiredly at his paper house,
then turned his muttering mouth like a drum's day-beat
and began his own chant,
as the sun squeezed its last sunshine like a dripping orange onto the immense rift.

With his chant's cadence rising,
out of the rift rose melancholy, even as the falling day's light cut glorious shadows amongst his trees.
Through the rift a ribboned road, traveled by few, known by fewer, unraveled.
Above the rift a ribboned blue sky peeled backwards and into it's own arms,
splotching blue stains across the fields where the tiny man's crops lay slumbering.
Inside the rift a small man atop a ladder leaned on a paper house,
singing a mournful dirge where once words lay tumbled and jumbled on paper walls.

The Shifting Cliff (Poem)

A small, giant man stooped low,
out from the overhang above his head,
and into a word-strewn land.

He untethered himself from the rock face,
connecting with the open plains stretching out before him as a palm face opening quietly.
Walking forward, he looked backwards,
at the heart of his hearth,
at the embers like small suns flickering in nighttime shade.

Walking further, he began his life cant,
a chant for life and passage,
and he could slowly feel himself become lighter and lighter,
barely crushing the tips of grass blades under his bare soles,
rising, rising, to cloud shards blanketing his barren plains.

"This is not the end," he chanted,
the cant approaching its climax,
its mountain peak of emotion,
just as he turned and faced the jagged edge rising haughtily
towards clouds like inkstains.
"Oh what a giddy thing," he murmured,
as his outstretched hands beckoned words from their lowly heights.

Then, words, tumbling and winnowing chaff from field, rose.
They rose and rose to the tiny man's arms stretched like taut branches across a horizon,
and danced like marionette strings in the man's smile,
as he hurled them at the shifting cliffs, their faces melting and mocking,
daring his attack.

Screaming, the cliff sides changed and changed, dodging and dying,
crumbling like crushed teeth down their sides,
as the giant finished the chant's final verse,
grew heavy again,
and trudged backwards into his cave.

The nighttime shade embers flickered welcome and happiness,
even as tumbling stones cracked and wedged themselves over the entrance to his home.
"The day grows longer," he whispered to himself,
as he poked the fire into life with his fingers, stirring coals filled with images.

The Horizon Tilts (Poem)

Rays danced and dipped along the shimmering waves,
bobbing the boat as the boy sat on its edge.
Hit feet touched the water,
lifted into the air,
and skimmed the water again,
only to repeat this pattern time and time again.

His quiet hands grasped the wooden side,
splintered with age and disrepair,
cracked paint as a faint image forgotten to time.
Everything on the surface of the sea smelled of serenity and despair.

The wind picked up slightly,
tossing and turning his salty hair,
covering and uncovering eyes staring out,
wondering why his boat had come this far,
when the currents should be pulling him further in.

Then, the true siren of the sea beckoned,
watery hands full of beauty and silence,
and he slipped into her depths,
leaving a boat that turned silently back towards shore and hope.